


Borderlines

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coda, Episode: s12e09 First Blood, Headspace, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, POV Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 13:16:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9493172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: When they were gone, Cas hadn’t known where else to go. Now that they’re back, he isn’t sure he’s allowed to follow them inside.





	

“I’m sorry,” Cas says.

He knows he scared Dean back there on the bridge. There is already so much blood on his hands, and he knows they both would like to think he would hesitate, now, to add any more. They would both like to think he’s become something different, something softer, something better. The truth, of course, is that he would do a hell of a lot for Dean. It scares him, sometimes, and he can tell it scares Dean, too.

He has always been this way -- too loud, too bright, too much. He is using this human voice so as not to make Dean’s ears bleed, forcing his true form into this vessel so as not to burn out his eyes. He thinks maybe if he could just get himself the rest of the way under control -- if he could reign himself in, tone himself down, if he could pack his feelings away into a small enough package, maybe he could finally fit into Dean’s life in the way he wants to.

He’s too much and yet he’s not enough, because if he were enough, if he were more -- if he were a better hunter, better friend, better angel -- Sam and Dean would never have wound up in that prison in the first place, would never have had to make that deal in the first place. He is simultaneously too much and not enough, and an exhaustion he shouldn’t be able to feel settles deeper into his bones the longer he tries to walk that impossible line.

“For what?” Dean asks, voice low, and before Cas has a chance to say _For everything,_ Dean shakes his head decisively. “Don’t apologize,” he adds, eyes fixed on the back of Sam’s seat. “Not for that.”

Cas doesn’t know what to make of it. He had thought maybe it meant something, the way Dean had been looking at him before the car had come to a stop, the way he had been stealing glances for miles, like he was nervous, like he was gearing up for something big. He had been waiting for Dean to do something, to make some move -- to say he was glad to have made it out alive, maybe, to say he was relieved, to smile at him, to reach over and take Cas’ hand in his own. He had simply been misreading the situation, though. Dean had been looking at him like that because he had been trying to tell Cas what was coming, trying to figure out the words to explain there was no cause for celebration. Dean doesn’t want him like that, Cas reminds himself. Dean doesn’t even want his apology.

Cas sighs. He says, “All right.”

It’s a long, quiet drive back to the bunker after that. Cas keeps his hands to himself.

\--

The Winchesters are exhausted by the time Mary finally pulls to a stop in the garage, the adrenaline having worn off hours before. Cas can see it in the way they move as they stand, the way they share tired smiles across the roof of the car. Cas watches them as he hovers, uncertain, by his own open door.

He had watched them, back there in the woods, had noticed the way Sam and Dean’s attention immediately shifted from him when Mary stepped into view. He had seen their looks of horror when she had offered to sacrifice herself to save them. He had felt like an intruder then and he still feels so now.

It’s rude, he knows, to enter someone’s home without permission. You’re supposed to wait to be invited. He has been allowed to stay in the bunker before, but he has never been explicitly asked to stay. He has, he reminds himself, been explicitly told that he had to leave.

When they were gone, Cas hadn’t known where else to go. Now that they’re back, he isn’t sure he’s allowed to follow them inside.

He is still hovering by the car door when Dean turns from the stairs down into the bunker, eyebrow raised, and says, “Cas? You coming?”

“Yes,” he says. It’s close enough to an invitation. He closes his door and follows Dean inside.

\--

Cas hovers awkwardly around them as they hug each other again, as they tell each other their goodnights. Dean lingers as Sam and Mary head off to bed, watching them as they retreat down the hallway.

“Monsters,” he mumbles.

Cas cocks his head in a silent question as Dean turns to him. “Their sheets are gonna be disgusting in the morning,” Dean says, shaking his head. He runs a hand through his hair, only to pull it away a moment later and stare at it in disgust. “I’m gonna clean up. You sticking around for a while?”

Cas wants to say, _I intend to stay for as long as I can._ He wants to say, _I don’t want to leave until you tell me I have to._ He imagines that’s a bit too forward, though. He doesn’t want to make Dean uncomfortable, so he says, “I’d like to, yes.”

“Awesome,” Dean says, a grin spreading across his face. “I figured we could put on a movie or something after I hit the showers.”

Dean must be doing this for his sake, Cas thinks. Dean must feel compelled to entertain him, because that is what you do when there are guests in your home. You feel obligated.

“Aren’t you tired?” Cas asks politely. “I don’t want to bother you if you want to rest.”

Dean rolls his eyes. He says, “I just spent weeks with nothing to do but think and sleep. I want some noise.”

Cas decides not to point out that that doesn’t make sense given that they just spent hours driving back to the bunker in near silence. Instead, he says, “All right.”

\--

Dean looks more like himself when he returns, Cas thinks. He is in his pajamas and his favorite robe, and the smell and grime of that prison and those woods has been scrubbed away. He seems relaxed. Almost happy. It hurts to look at him.

Dean grabs the laptop from the table. “C’mon,” he says, gesturing towards the hallway with his head and shoulder.

Cas follows Dean to his room. He hesitates, for a moment, as he stands in the doorway, watching Dean sit on his bed and open the laptop. He stood here so many times over the past six weeks. The only family he knows had been gone, the bunker had been silent and empty, and he had wanted nothing more than to go into Dean’s room, to lie on his bed, to find some sort of comfort in being surrounded by Dean’s things. He hadn’t known if it would be all right, though, hadn’t known if he would be intruding. That’s where he had been, when he missed Dean’s first few calls -- standing on this threshold, trying and failing to give himself permission to enter.

This is different, he reminds himself. Dean is inviting him in.

He steps into Dean’s room and joins him on his bed. They sit side by side, almost touching but not quite, with the laptop near their feet. Dean already has a movie playing, something Cas doesn’t recognize, with the volume turned low. Dean sits with his arms crossed, staring at the screen. He isn’t stealing glances at Cas this time, but he has that feeling again, that sense that Dean is preparing to say something.

It takes Dean another ten minutes, but once he finally starts talking, he talks about the past six weeks. He talks about everything he did, his laughter coming out a little hollow as he jokes about the fact that it’s a short list. He talks about tracking the passage of time by the once-a-day-meals that were the only human contact he had, about scratching tally marks into the wall with a loose screw, about sleeping and staring at the walls and singing every song he knows just to have something to break up the silence. He talks about waiting, about planning, about thinking, _Man, how the hell are we going to get out of this one?_

Cas listens, and he notes that Dean never talks about how he felt. Cas can imagine, though. He knows how much Dean hates being alone, how hard it is for him to be separated from Sam. He knows what sort of state Dean was in when he pulled him out of hell, and if Dean said that prison was worse? Well.

So Cas listens, and when Dean is done, he asks Cas what he’s been up to while he was gone.

“I…” Cas starts. He wants to say, _Nothing._ He wants to say, _You were gone and you were all I could think about._ He wants to say, _I tried to hunt, to do something else, to do anything else, but all I could focus on was the exact number of seconds you’d been missing._ He has to remind himself, again, not to come on too strong.

He must take too long to respond, because before he can settle on the right words, Dean is nudging him with his shoulder and saying, “Missed me that much, huh?”

Cas looks right at him, then, looks at Dean’s face, mere inches away from his own. Dean is looking back at him, mouth quirked up in a half smile. It’s startling, after so many weeks of separation, to see him up close like this. Cas is so caught up the sight of him that before he can stop himself, he says, “Yes.”

Dean makes a strange noise, a huff that is not quite a laugh. “Oh,” he says, smile fading, and then he looks away from Cas, back at the movie playing on the laptop.

Dean lapses into silence, which is how Cas knows it was the wrong thing to say.

\--

Dean dozes off with his head on Cas’ shoulder. It was an accident, Cas knows, but now that it’s happened, he is very careful not to move.

He wants to, though. He wants to reach over and take Dean’s hand in his own. He wants to run his fingertips over the freckles on Dean’s cheeks, to brush his fingers through Dean’s hair, to press a kiss to the top of his head. It would be so easy, but he doesn’t know where the boundary is. He doesn’t know what’s allowed.

Cas has always struggled with performing humanity, and it’s been complicated, he suspects, by the fact that his primary human interaction comes from two people who aren’t always terribly consistent. Sometimes, Dean seems desperate to hug him, reaching back when Cas reaches for him, and other times Dean seems to be actively avoiding him. Sometimes Dean lets Cas heal him without complaint and others he adamantly refuses. Sometimes Dean stands so close to him that they can’t help but brush against each other and others he complains about personal space as he actively moves away. Sometimes Cas can tie these reactions to particular things -- Dean feeling relieved or guilty or happy about certain events -- and sometimes he can’t. With Sam, too, he knows there was a time he didn’t want any kind of physical contact with Cas, when he avoided hugging him, said it would be weird -- but now Sam initiates it, too, and Cas can’t exactly pinpoint what caused the change.

He is always concerned he’s about to violate a boundary whose borders always seem to be changing. He is waiting for Dean to tell him where the line is, to give him permission to cross it, to give him some sign. He had been waiting, in the car, for Dean to reach over, to take his hand of his own volition, to show him that it would be okay. That they could do that and it wouldn’t be too much. It wouldn’t scare him off. But he hadn’t, so Cas is still left wondering.

Dean’s hand is resting on his thigh, inches from Cas’ own. It can’t hurt, Cas thinks, not any worse than these past weeks have. He reaches over very carefully, touches the tips of his fingers to Dean’s knuckles, traces lightly over his skin. Dean shifts in his sleep, making a soft sound at the disruption.

Cas stops and pulls his hand back. He sits very still and keeps his hands to himself. He tells himself this is enough.


End file.
